The Indices of Multiple Deprivation give us an amazing insight into poverty and deprivation across England. Tiny geographical areas ranked and scored across a whole range of poverty indicators - and the data used by government to fund services and assess need.

Such microlocal level information surely deserves to be mapped. But how do you do it? Using the data, we can pinpoint the most deprived place in England: Jaywick Sands in Essex.

The problem is that it's not exactly Jaywick Sands - but a small area just to the left on the map. These are smaller than local authorities and smaller, even than council wards. These are the very small, ward-sized areas called Lower Super Output Areas. So, suddenly, all our maps are useless - and 32,482 boundaries are too many to draw by hand.

Which is where you need a helpful academic. Alasdair Rae, a Lecturer in the Department of Town and Regional Planning at the University of Sheffield - you can read more about him here - is an expert on mapping data and also an expert on the Indices of Multiple Deprivation.

Rae took the geo boundaries and merged them with the Deprivation data on a Google Fusion tables database. The result is suddenly we have an interactive map of every area - easier to use than the official one and quicker to work. Here's the link to the Fusion table that he created.

Rae points out that there is still a huge north-south divide in poverty - you can see his animation of the richest and poorest places here:

Here's what he says about the data:

The English Indices of Deprivation are now published every three years and are the government's official measure of how poor places are, based on over 30,000 areas of about 1,500 people each. They include information on income, employment, health, education, services, crime and living environment but the final scores for each area are most heavily influenced by income and employment data. The national pattern of deprivation for England tells a familar story - deprived inner cities in London and the North (particularly Liverpool, Manchester and Middlesbrough), poverty in coastal towns like Clacton and Southend) and significant disparities between places only miles apart.

With this information, we get a fine-grained picture of which areas require extra assistance, which areas have not benefitted from previous rounds of policy intervention, and which areas are least in need of help. Ultimately, the information is used to help policy makers decide where money should be spent. By making it available in map format, it also allows local people to see how their area matches up to others in England, because the Indices of Deprivation are a relative measure. Similar indices exist for other parts of the UK, and though these are derived slightly differently they tell a similar story.